Deeply Rooted

Victoria, at the press, lowering the paper onto an inked plate of “Stargazing.”

Victoria Elbroch’s journey to becoming a New Hampshire artist is a love story. Not only did she fall for her now-husband, Lawrence, when he was stationed in her home county of Suffolk, in the U.K., but her passion for ink drawing also led her to an idyllic artistic life here, once his military career brought them to New England.

“The Second Coming,” ink on paper with collage, a Chestnut at Croft Castle. Etchings available at elbroch.com.

“I met Larry in church,” says Elbroch. “We tease about how he lit my candle during the ceremony — and set my heart aflame as well!” He quickly became part of her family before they married in her small town in East Anglia. “But he was a long way from Manhattan where he grew up, and I think he missed home terribly.”

The young couple soon found themselves posted back to the States. “I had traveled all my life, but when we got to Alabama, it was a bit of a culture shock,” says Elbroch.

Once the Air Force moved the pair to Orlando, Elbroch began taking art classes. “I studied both pottery and etching, while Lawrence got his master’s degree,” she says. “We were heading to Oklahoma next, and he said we could not move both a kiln and an etching press, so I needed to choose.”

Now a burgeoning etcher, Elbroch found Oklahoma City to be a fertile locus of art. “Everyone you encountered had original art displayed.” The creative community was welcoming, with a top-rated art festival. “I went back to their show every year for 30 years.”

Elbroch thrived, creating detailed townscapes of the English villages of her youth. “I went back to England often,” she says. “I would take trips with my parents, staying with my brother and eccentric aunts, and draw what I saw. It became a powerful connector to the landscape and to my family.”

The Elbrochs settled in Nashua in 1982 as Lawrence began his last assignment at Hanscom Air Force Base (30 minutes away in Massachusetts). “I joined the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, which was pivotal, because not only do they have the annual craftsmen’s fair and a network of galleries, but it is like a family that takes you in.”

Making crucial final decisions on a drawing of a chestnut. Victoria is a featured artist in one of the Currier Museum of Art’s current exhibitions, “Radical Quiet: Contemporary Drawings of Nature,” on view through January 10, 2027.

By then, Elbroch was shifting her artistic focus from country villages to the astonishing trees within and around them. “After my father died, my mum was reluctant to travel,” she says. “So, I’d stay just in the local area, which was rich in ancient oaks. It was a very natural thing; I’d always drawn trees, but now they became the predominant inspiration for my work.”

Elbroch’s meticulously detailed ink drawings simultaneously capture the immense scale of the trees and the intricate patterns of their bark, with a gaze both upwards toward the towering canopies of leaves and downwards to the intertwined roots. She finds tree root systems extraordinary in both their appearance and their environmental vitality. Elbroch also creates collages that combine her ink drawings with other elements, such as old newspaper clippings.

“In Full Sail,” etching.

She also has a vibrant collaborative process with her husband, who took up photography after retiring from the Air Force. “Larry took photography trips to Asia. I came along, and we both found the region to be indescribably rich and beautiful.” Naturally, Elbroch especially noticed the region’s breathtaking trees and drew them whenever she could.

In 2019, Elbroch received a $25,000 Artist Advancement Grant from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, which she used to spend an extended period in England. “I wanted to get buried in the English countryside with its oaks and chestnuts,” she says, adding that she was “able to do an enormous body of new work.”

Most recently, she is being featured as one of three artists in an exhibit at the Currier Museum entitled “Radical Quiet: Contemporary Drawings of Nature.” Her work has appeared in other museum exhibitions across the region, and she relies on several select galleries to showcase and broker her prints.

Lawrence and Victoria inspecting a new collaborative piece, “Outstretched Arms,” in their framing studio.

“I feel they must see in my trees something universal,” she says of buyers. “They remind them of actual nature or a fantasy tree; it could be a tree of your dreams.”

Ultimately, Elbroch most enjoys the life she and Lawrence share at their property just over the bridge from Portsmouth, in Kittery, Maine, with their two beloved children and four grandchildren as regular visitors. “Our old Victorian house has three studios with room for my huge drawing table, sink and inking surfaces, plus Larry’s computer, printers and framing equipment.”

“We have been together over 55 years in a wonderful collaboration in both art and life,” she says. “I’m slowing down a little bit, but the passion is still there.”